


Mermaids Singing Each to Each

by unimole



Category: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 04:02:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7829698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unimole/pseuds/unimole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victoire Weasley, Junior Auror, could never in her wildest dreams have predicted that her very first post-Academy assignment would be such an important one, but it was kind of incredible that the Department had decided to trust her with guarding the foremost Dark Witch of their times.</p><p>Other things Victoire Weasley, Junior Auror, could not have predicted even in her wildest dreams: that the foremost Dark Witch of their times was actually kind of lovely and sweet; that Azkaban had certain charms to it despite its cold cells and dark stone walls; that, over the course of a year, your feelings can really flip out on you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mermaids Singing Each to Each

**Author's Note:**

> For #16

Bill, which Victoire had always called her father, and Maman, which Fleur had always insisted on being called by Victoire, were more than a little taken aback when Victorie Apparated into Shell Cottage one afternoon, almost delirious with news of her first post-Auror Academy assignment. She showed them the Ministry parchment clutched triumphantly in her fist and steeled herself for an inevitable spat. Prepared herself to win the inevitable spat, more like.

“We understand that you cannot change this assignment,” Maman began, exchanging a wry look with her husband.

“I don’t want to change it!”

“We understand you cannot change it,” Maman went on like Victoire had said nothing at all, her nostrils flaring just slightly, “but for a new Auror, Azkaban is no, ah, piece of cakewalk. They should let you do your fieldwork first, I think.” Fleur had gotten better at using English expressions during all the years she’d lived with Bill in Shell Cottage; at this point, the way she occasionally mangled them and certainly the way she pronounced them with a minute curl of her lip and an exaggerated French accent, was a conscious and deliberate choice. It was one of Victoire’s favorite things about her mother, though she never did manage to get the lip curl down quite right when trying to make Teddy laugh by impersonating her.

Still, she tried her best to make the same disdainful face back at Maman and so Maman elbowed Bill. Having elbowed him, she then tilted her head onto his shoulder and snuck (Victoire was well aware, though she wished she weren’t) her hand into the back pocket of his Muggle jeans, because even though they’d been together for, what, 25 years and should be entirely too ancient to function, those two couldn’t touch just a little bit without wrapping themselves around each other entirely.

“Yes, peanut,” Bill said after they were done nuzzling and Victoire’s eyes had almost rolled out of her skull.

“Don’t call me peanut, Bill. I’m almost twenty-one years old.”

“ _Yes,_ peanut. But Azkaban?”

“When you were my age,” Victoire said, “you’d been in Egypt for how many years? You’d gotten those scars already—” She pointed to the Knut-sized round one by his collarbone and the long faint line that stretched from his earlobe and trailed down his neck— “and your earring, and that tattoo.” Victoire indicated the truly hilarious little pin-up witch that Bill had gotten on a Firewhiskey-sodden dare. It was just a tiny cartoon, really, on the back of his wrist, but he’d completely massacred it trying to remove it the following morning. “Remember the stories you used to tell? I remember. Aurors remember.”

Though her face was squashed up and mangled, the pin-up witch winked at Victoire.

Bill looked both sheepish and like he was trying not to smile, which Victoire counted as a win.

“And Fleur. Mum. _Maman_. Just how many dragons had you fought off by the time you were my age? How many Triwizard Tournaments? How many wars?”

“Just one, mon chou.” Despite the endearment, Maman was glaring. It only fired up Victoire more.

“One each! And you’re trying to argue against me accepting a piddly little Auror assignment.” It wasn’t, of course, like her parents could really do anything about Victoire’s assignment, considering she was of age. Still, hashing it out like this allowed Victoire to forget her own worries for a minute. She’d never been to Azkaban, even during training.

“Perhaps you are right,” Fleur conceded. “Bill?”

“At least the Dementors are gone.”

“And it’s only for a year,” Victoire made sure to tell them. “Then I get slotted out to do fieldwork for a bit. Good enough for you, Maman?”

“Perhaps. All the same, we should talk to ‘Arry, non?”

“No, you should not talk to ‘‘Arry,’ Maman!” How mortifying to have your parents running to your boss, even if they had known him since before you were born. “He assigned me this because he thinks I can do it. You know I got top marks in Vigilance and Surveillance. He trusts me.

“Besides,” she added, “do you know what Julie Underwood is doing right now? She’s in America, investigating a vampiric conspiracy in Miami.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Bill said. “Nice and warm, plus the sun should flush them out right quick.”

“They use some orange tanning goop to make their skin resilient. Also, all of them carry metal wands and there’s lots of huge alligators around, and poor Julie has to eat a bucket of chicken a day to stay undercover. She’s gone awfully zitty, Maman. Would you rather I had her assignment?”

Maman’s lips sort of thinned as she frowned.

“Alligators can’t be any worse than dragons, and you see how well Uncle Charlie’s holding up,” Bill tried, but Victoire knew his heart wasn’t in it.

“Uncle Charlie who just last year almost lost an arm to an infected burn, you mean? That Uncle Charlie? Alligators don’t burn you, by the way. They just swallow you whole. And,” Victoire said in a stroke of inspiration, “they eat cats. Do you want Effie to be eaten by an alligator?”

Bill and Maman loved Effie almost as much as they loved Victoire herself. They both looked chastened at the very thought.

“I thought not,” Victoire said. “I’ll keep in touch, though. The head of my unit said I could bring Atkinson and that most owls don’t have a problem finding their way from Azkaban. I love you.”

“We love you, too,” Maman said.

“Be careful, peanut,” Bill chimed in. He slid his arm around Maman’s waist and she leaned into him. Spat successfully won and her own worries somewhat alleviated, Victoire Disapparated again before they could start making out on the spot.

\---

Victoire and her fellow recent Academy alumni were following Azkaban’s head warden through the winding corridors of Azkaban. The warden, Coates something or other, kept his eyes on a long scroll of parchment, which he scanned intermittently, giving out cell designations as they walked. The group of newly minted Aurors trailing behind him was swiftly shrinking as they each got told which prisoner they were to guard and deposited at the cell in question. There were only a couple of Aurors left when Victoire finally received her designation.

“Junior Auror Weasley, you are assigned to…”

Coates squinted down at the parchment.

“Here it is. Cell 8926. Just down the hall.”

“But isn’t that...?” a voice gasped behind Victoire. Coates ignored the interruption; he gestured for the Aurors to follow him.

“Cell 8926,” Coates repeated and showed Victoire inside a slim room that contained nothing but a small stool in front of a brick wall. The wall looked no different from any other wall in Azkaban, really. The only indication there was anything special about it was a small placard reading ‘8926’ and a gilded Bolting Dip beneath it. Taking it all in, Victoire had a hard time deciding whether she was more nervous or more excited.

“This is you, Auror Weasley. Delphini Rowle. Any questions? Complaints?” He directed this at Victoire, who shook her head no. “Fantastic. Your Senior Auror liaison will be—” Coates consulted his scroll again— “Mollen Lind.”

“Brilliant,” Victoire said. She knew Mollen a little. Mollen had been in Hufflepuff with Teddy, so Victoire had seen her around a few times when she’d snuck into the Basement.

“Yes,” Coates said, “‘brilliant’ indeed. Any queries or worries, you go to Auror Lind first. As always, Junior Aurors take the night shift. If you manage to stick around for a few years, maybe you’ll start getting the cushy shifts. Do I give much for your chances? I don’t know about that.”

Victoire and the other Aurors laughed politely, as though Coates had been telling a joke instead of repeating a variation on exact same thing he’d said each time he’d given an Auror their orders over the course of the evening.

“Here you are, then.” Coates handed Victoire her Bolting Rod; Victoire could have clapped with glee, but of course she just took it. Made of slick black glass and metal, it was considerably lighter than it looked in pictures and cold in a way that reminded her of liquid rather than solid matter. She weighed it in her hands for a second before clipping it into the rod holder on her hip.

“Well, good luck,” Coates said.

“Thank you.” Victoire nodded to the rest of her group and watched them move on down the hallway. She took several deep breaths, trying to centre herself, but there was no denying she was shaking a little beneath her brand new Auror robes.

“Delphini Rowle,” Victoire called as she slid her Bolting Rod into the dip in the wall. She turned it forty-five degrees and watched the wall ripple and fade until it was virtually undetectable to human eyes, though you could, of course, feel it if you reached out and touched it. Victoire wasn’t planning on making Rowle live in a glass cage, but she wanted them to be able to see each other when they introduced themselves, even if Victoire didn’t quite dare to just up and walk inside the cell to say howya. Not like she’d be allowed to enter the cell, anyway, except for in absolute emergencies.

Rowle was sitting on her bunk, head in her hands, but when she saw Victoire on the other side of the wall, she stood up.

“It’s just Delphini,” she said, her voice low and sort of raspy. “Or prisoner 8926, I suppose, if you’d rather.” Her mouth twisted as she said it, and Victoire could understand why. She wouldn’t like to be referred to as a series of numbers, either.

“No, Delphini’s fine, if that’s what you want.” Victoire’s own voice came out strong and sure. A good thing, that, because she certainly didn’t feel it.

When Victoire had gotten her cell assignment, it had taken the group all of thirty seconds to reach Rowle’s cell, so it wasn’t like she’d had a whole lot of time to ponder the implications of it all. If she’d had time to think about it, though, she still wouldn’t have known what to expect, really, and now she was faced with Rowle and she didn’t know how to feel. She considered herself reasonably well-informed about Rowle’s failed plot: for one, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had seen fit to tell its trainee Aurors the most salient facts of the case. Beyond that, she was, if she did say so herself, a master at eavesdropping, so she’d picked up a few of the more lurid details as well. You couldn’t believe everything you heard, though. Maybe Rowle (Delphini, Victoire reminded herself, not Rowle) wouldn’t have a nose — that seemed feasible, if disturbing — but surely she didn’t have big, black, beating wings? Delphini couldn’t be too conspicuous one way or the other, or even Albus Severus and that Scorpius friend of his would surely have picked up on the fact that there was something wrong with her sooner.

But she definitely hadn’t realised that Delphini was really, really pretty. She was a few years older than Victoire and stood a little taller even barefoot and she definitely had a nose. A well-sculpted nose, at that. No wings that Victoire could see, but beautiful hair that tumbled softly over her shoulders. It wasn’t filthy or matted into clumps; Delphini clearly took care of herself as much as being imprisoned allowed. Her eyes were so blue they were almost violet and her face was perfectly heart-shaped. Although it was very pale, her skin was clear and bright and healthy-looking. All the rumours swirling about were wrong — Delphini didn’t look a thing like Lord Voldemort. In fact, Delphini didn’t look a bit like a master villain or even like the doomsday-auguring witch Victoire knew she was. She looked like a woman who might have been Head Girl at Hogwarts, a couple of years above you and highly competent and attractive and funny, but nice enough that you couldn’t rightly be jealous of her, so you’d just idolize her and have a bit of a platonic crush on her, maybe. Voldemort had looked as creepy as he was evil. Delphini, plenty evil in her own right, looked like the kind of girl you could be friends with if you were lucky. It was unsettling.

“I’m Auror Weasley,” Victoire said, trying to shake her thoughts. “I’ll be with you during the evenings and nights and early mornings.”

“Pleasure.”

“Yeah, pleasure.” Victoire saw no point in being cruel for cruelty’s sake, even to prisoners who’d been incarcerated for multiple counts of Unforgivables and conspiracy to undo the very fabric of the world through time-travel. One especially pock-marked and exhausted instructor at the Academy had sneered at her and called her Little Miss Bright-Eyes, telling her outright that she was never going to be an Auror if she didn’t toughen up a little. But Victoire thought she was plenty tough. Tough didn’t mean indiscriminately acting like an ass to people. Her ethos was more like, Make life absolute hell for the people who deserve it, but nobody else.

“Just let me know if you need anything. Do you want me to dim the walls a bit?”

“That’s okay, thanks.”

Victoire wasn’t sure whether Delphine fell asleep or not, but she curled back up on the bunk bed and shut her eyes. Her eyelashes, casting shadows on her high cheekbones, were irritatingly long and dark for someone whose hair was almost as light as Victoire’s own. They didn’t exchange another word until the morning, when Victoire fixed Delphine some breakfast before Mollen Lind came in to relieve her.

\---

“Hey, little lady. You been good to Atkinson?”

Ever since she’d been a kitten, Effie had disdained two things: an empty food bowl and Victoire being out. Victoire had purchased the cat just after graduating from Hogwarts and finding a flat of her own, and every evening when she came home from the Academy, she could hear Effie meowing indignantly all the way out in the stairwell. It was a wonder her neighbours didn’t complain. Possibly Effie was even angrier now that Victoire worked the night shift rather than being gone during the day — she had an inkling Effie was fairly resistant to change. When Victoire unlocked the door, Effie launched herself at her; just an angry ball of fluff with ears and a tail, really, that Victoire had to stroke and soothe and coo at until she grew utterly bored and started acting like she’d never cared for Victoire at all and definitely hadn’t missed her. That was Victoire’s cue to sit down in front of the fireplace and talk to Teddy a while. They’d done it practically every day ever since they decided they didn’t want to move in together just yet. It had been a couple of days since the last talk, though. It was getting hard to find the time, especially now that they kept different hours.

Today, his hair was longer than usual and lavender. It wasn’t a look she’d pick for him, but she had to admit it suited him pretty well. She wondered what he’d look like with silver-blue hair. He looked a little like Delphini, didn’t he, because his grandmother Andromeda was Bellatrix’s sister, so that made them cousins or something, right? How weird was that?

“Anyone home?” Teddy asked, grinning. “They run you that ragged over at Azkaban, huh? You look exhausted.”

“Cheers.”

“Aw, don’t be like that. You know you’re the prettiest fraction of a Veela a man could ask for.”

“And you’re, as always, my most favourite shapeshifter.” Victoire smiled at Teddy and cracked open a can of Caspar’s Finest Tarragon that she’d been aching for all night long.

“Booze first thing in the morning?” Teddy teased, pretending to tut at her. “That way lies madness, Weasley. Madness or a drinking problem, your pick.”

“You know how some people justify day drinking with ‘it’s five o’clock somewhere?’” Victoire said, taking a long, glorious sip. “Well, I don’t give a fuck what time it is anywhere. This cider has my name quilled all over it and I love it more than anything, you included. After that, I’m going to bed, so you see I’m leading an excellent, incredibly exciting life.”

“Are you really tired?” Teddy looked suddenly concerned, though Victoire had been joking, mostly. Well, not about going to bed. “Is it difficult, working in Azkaban?”

“I wouldn’t say difficult, exactly.” Victoire wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about it yet. “It’s different.”

\---

“Auror Weasley,” Delphini said after Mollen had left and Victoire had adjusted the walls to Delphini’s preferred opacity setting.

“Delphini.”

“How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. How are you?”

It felt slightly strange that Delphini was so courteous; Victoire would not have expected that out of any prisoner, really. She supposed she must be lonely. Certainly Victoire would have been in the same situation. She knew Delphini wasn’t even allowed on the courtyard walks the other prisoners could take, since nobody was sure how to keep her from flying away. She was allowed books, but Victoire had seen the paltry state of Azkaban’s library and therefore wasn’t at all surprised she’d never caught Delphini engrossed in some grotty romance novel. Lonely and bored, then. Victoire made a note to herself to bring in some better books.

“I’m good,” Delphini nevertheless responded, “under the circumstances.” She stretched out her long legs in front of her, crossing and uncrossing them, the muscle seeming to dance beneath her smooth skin. Victoire noticed she was wearing her shorter summer set of prison robes. Was it that warm? Even in July, the weather on the island never seemed to be anything short of grey and dreary.

She realised she was staring at Delphini’s legs and tried to busy herself with something else. Her bag, the stool she was meant to be sitting on, anything.

“Aren’t you going to ask about my hair?” Delphini said. While Victoire had been trying her best to look away from Delphini, Delphini had been fixing her with a stare. When she mentioned it, Victoire had no choice but to glance at her hair. It was really nice, but she knew that already. She couldn’t see what Delphini was getting at.

“What about it?”

“It’s silver. Aren’t you going to tease me about it?” She affected a dumb voice. “‘Going grey already, Delphini? I should be the one with grey hair, not you. You get on my nerves, you do.’ And so on.”

“My boyfriend is a Metamorphmagus,” Victoire said. “He pops up with any number of hair colours in a given week; if I were going to make fun of people for their unusual hair, I’d never get anything else done. And my mother is quarter-Veela. Her hair is almost as gold as yours is silver. If people are dicks about it to you, it’s really probably just that they’re jealous, you know.”

“You’re part-Veela? I should have guessed.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re beautiful.” Delphini said it plainly, like she was stating a fact, but Victoire started blushing furiously, cursing her Weasley genes as she felt her cheeks pinch with heat. If Delphini was trying to fluster Victoire and put her out of commission, she wouldn’t be having it.

“Right,” she said. “Well, I’ll let you sleep.”

She dimmed Delphini’s walls and took Tamsin Taravanner’s latest out of her bag. By the time Mollen came to relieve her from her shift, she hadn’t managed to read more than a single chapter, and she’d be hard-pressed to explain just why the main character had been to see a man about a Grim, should anyone ask her to recap.

\---

One Monday evening when Victoire started her first shift of the week, Delphini’s eyes looked suspiciously swollen and red.

“Cheer up,” Victoire said, even though she, herself, did not feel as cheerful as all that. The weekend had seemed interminable and even getting to hang out with Teddy all day long hadn’t alleviated her feeling that she’d rather be doing something productive. “It could be worse, right?”

“That’s easy to say for someone who hasn’t been sentenced to life in prison.”

Victoire supposed she had to cede that point.

“Did you see what was offered for supper today?” Delphini looked glummer than Victoire had ever seen her. “Fishcakes. But I think they were actually made out of minced giant squid. I swear I saw a tentacle. A sucker.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard Azkaban food can be rough.” Victoire studied Delphine. She was clearly attempting to sound normal, but there was a tell-tale warble in her throat like she was going to start crying again. “But it still could be worse, yeah? At least there aren’t any Dementors anymore.”

It struck Victoire that perhaps Delphini didn’t know what Dementors were; it was really difficult to gauge her level of knowledge, considering she hasn’t exactly followed a school curriculum. Obviously she was well more advanced in practical magic than Victoire, but did she know about Dementors? When Victoire opened her mouth to explain, however, Delphini just waved her hand.

“Dementors can’t take anything away from you,” she said, “if you don’t have any good memories and nothing to feel happy about.”

Well, they could Kiss you and take your soul, Victoire thought, but it seemed unnecessary to point that out under the circumstances.

“What’s that, Wretched Wraith lyrics?” she asked instead, trying to joke away the discomfort she felt. But she wasn’t Uncle Ron; she didn’t know how to joke. Delphini heaved a disgusted sigh and turned over in her bunk, away from Victoire, who sighed in turn and sat down on her rickety stool. She took out her slightly mangled knitting and stared at it disconsolately. It was going to be a long night.

\---

“You never have time for me anymore,” Teddy complained after a momentary lull in their nightly conversation. Victoire couldn’t quite tell if he was serious or not, but Effie seemed to nod in agreement. Stupid cat. Stupid boyfriend.

“Don’t sulk, babe, it’s not becoming,” Victoire said. “And what are you even on about? We talk nearly every day.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just miss you.”

“I miss you, too.” She tried very hard to feel it. “I need to go, though. My shift starts in half an hour.”

“Good luck, Auror girl. Love you.”

“Love you, too.” Victoire waved at Teddy as he disappeared out of the fire, the flames turning back from green to red. She didn’t actually start work for an hour and a half yet, not on Thursdays, but Teddy didn’t know that and Victoire didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Well, she didn’t feel like talking to Teddy, at least. And it wasn’t even his fault. She hated herself for her useless, stupid, failing emotions.

“Zip it,” she told Effie when she meowed reproachfully. When would she stop projecting her guilty conscience onto her cat?

\---

“‘Night, Auror Weasley,” Mollen said when Victoire arrived at work. It occasionally annoyed Victoire that Mollen pretended they didn’t know each other outside of work, but she guessed it was for Delphini’s benefit.

“Good night, Auror Lind,” she replied, but if Mollen noticed Victoire’s pointed tone of voice, she didn’t mention it. She just nodded at Victoire and left the small room. Victoire went over to say hello to Delphini.

“Hi, Delphini. How’s it going?”

“I’m okay.” For once, Delphini didn’t ask how Victoire was in return. “You know,” she said instead, “you can call me Delphi.”

“Delphi?”

“Yeah. Don’t you like it better than Delphini?”

“I don’t know. I think Delphini’s pretty nice, actually. What’s wrong with it?”

“Just that Euphemia Rowle picked it, I’m pretty sure, and now I’m Delphini Rowle. I didn’t even get to pick my last name. I thought about writing to the Ministry to change it, but…”

Yeah, Victoire thought, Minister Granger would definitely look into a young girl wanting to change her surname to either Riddle or Lestrange. Actually, Delphini wouldn’t even have been registered with the Ministry until now, Victoire supposed.

“I don’t think Rowle picked it,” Victoire said, finding herself in the absurd position of really wanting the cheer someone up who’d just admitted to wanting to change her name to that of her Dark Lord father or Death Eater mother. “It’s a constellation, isn’t it? Or a star.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, one of the two. It must have been your mother who picked it. That whole family really goes in for star names.” Teddy had told Victoire as much.

“You must be right. I never realised.” Delphini was visibly pleased. She’d broken into a large smile, almost a grin, that made her eyes glitter and her cheeks glow. “Thank you. But you can still call me Delphi, if you like.”

“Delphi it is.” Victoire smiled back at Delphi, though she was sure it was nowhere near as arresting a smile. “My name is Victoire, speaking of your dreadful names, because I just had to be born on the anniversary of…” She trailed off, appalled with herself and her consistent ability to put her foot in her mouth.

“It’s okay,” Delphi said quietly when Victoire couldn’t think of a way to finish her sentence that didn’t end in disaster. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not like I’m going to forget. Anyway, nice to meet you, Victoire.”

While Victoire hadn’t exactly said Delphi could call her that, she found she kind of liked the sound of her name spoken in Delphi’s raspy voice, even if she still thought it was fairly horrible as names went.

“Nice to meet you, too, Delphi.”

\---

Victoire needed someone to talk to, clearly, but more or less her entire support network post-Hogwarts was Teddy and her family, and she couldn’t exactly Apparate into Teddy’s apartment and be like, “Here’s what we need to talk about: You, and how I’ve stopped being into you, possibly.” Louis and Dominique were useless. Victoire loved them, but they were just kids. Nobody liked to talk about matters of the heart with their dad; at least Victoire didn’t. He’d been such good friends with Teddy’s mum that he’d probably be really disappointed in Victoire for thinking about breaking it off. The extent of Maman’s relationship advice, meanwhile, was usually something along the lines of, “When everybody falls in love with you, you need to pick ze man you would be in love with even if he became hideous! Disfigured! An abominable hunch _back._ ” Victoire could both see her and hear her in her mind: Maman contorting her face into what she clearly believed was a horrible grimace, which still left her prettier than, oh, just about everyone. Then she’d grin at Bill and he’d grin back and it would quickly devolve into sappy declarations of love and lust.

But, all that aside, not everyone did fall in love with Victoire. If anything, about a solid eighty percent of all the blokes she’d ever been into had seemed to fancy Maman more than they fancied her. And what if she weren’t interested in picking any man?

Victoire had brooded over it all day; the thoughts were still weighing heavily on her mind by the time she came into work that evening.

“What’s wrong?” Delphi asked as Victoire put her bag on the floor and the Bolting Rod into the dip on the wall. “You don’t look too wizzo.”

“Have you ever had a boyfriend?” It just slunk out; as soon as the words had left Victoire’s mouth, she could have kicked herself. Delphi looked at her, her brows knitted.

“No, I’m sorry,” Victoire hurried to say, though the damage was already done. “Dumb question, _idiotic_ question. That was hugely inappropriate of me.”

“I don’t mind,” Delphi said after a pause, during which Victoire’s blood pretty much turned to ice as she imagined Delphi complaining about her impropriety and getting her transferred to a different post, away from Azkaban. Or worse, obviously, getting her fired. But if Delphi was planning on that, she didn’t let on. She walked over to the invisible wall and sat down cross-legged in front of Victoire. “No. I’ve never had a boyfriend.”

“Of course. I’m really sorry.” Victoire had meant ‘I’m sorry that you grew up all alone in an attic’ rather than ‘I’m sorry you’ve missed out on all the allegedly glorious things about the male gender,’ but Delphi made a scornful face.

“No need to be,” she said. “Boys are stupid.”

When Victoire shot her an inquisitive glance, Delphi elaborated:

“That pair that assisted me. Following about. The dark-haired one, especially. Albus.” She rolled her eyes like even saying his name annoyed her.

“But those aren’t boys. I mean, they’re not men,” Victoire said, a touch defensive of her cousin. “They’re just kids. Teens. All teens are idiots, that’s just life. You should see my younger siblings.”

“You have siblings?” Delphi sounded wistful. “How many?”

“Two.”

Delphi processed that with a look on her face that could have broken Victoire’s heart.

“All the same,” Delphi continued after a short while, “I contend that boys are dumb. Men, if you like.”

She stood again, tall and regal-looking and, frankly, stunning, even in her dumpy Azkaban robes.

“You glance at them like this.” Delphi gave Victoire a half-lidded, smoldering look. Victoire was none too proud to admit that the look sent Victoire’s heart leaping into her throat.

“You move your hips like that.” Delphi reached behind her back and pulled the fabric of her robe tight so that it clung to her every shapely curve. She took two steps closer to the invisible wall — closer to Victoire — and Victoire had to look away. A Veela’s dance couldn’t look more seductive. It was completely inappropriate and probably highly effective. Victoire refused to watch her. Heat was pooling in her lower belly.

“A glance like that, your hips like that, and boys — men — will do whatever you tell them,” Delphi finished. “They’ll follow you around like dumb puppies and you can have whatever you want.”

Point made, she sat back down on the floor. Mostly relieved, Victoire allowed herself to look at Delphi again.

“You have boy problems?”

Victoire kind of shrugged. It was dawning on her that she didn’t really want Teddy to do any of those things — follow her around or try to attend to her every whim. She was beginning to realise that they probably really did need to break it off, and that was a crushing, horrifying thought, because she’d been with him forever and in so many ways she still loved him.

“Just do that. They’ll be eating out of your hand like a pigeon.”

“A pigeon?” Victoire was glad of the change of subject. For the first time, she saw Delphi look a little sheepish. She started blushing, even, the pale skin of her cheeks and the tip of her nose growing pink.

“I didn’t have any friends or anyone, really,” she said. “Anyone human, I mean. There was a little window up in the attic and birds and bats came sometimes. Pigeons, mostly, so I talked to them a lot.”

Victoire felt her heart twist again; with what she didn’t entirely know. Sympathy, probably.

\---

“Why’d you do it?” Victoire finally asked one day, just out of curiosity. She hardly expected Delphini an answer. It wasn’t like she owed Victoire one, not really.

“Do you know what it’s like not to have parents?”

No, that was, of course, not something Victoire had ever had to contend with. Even the Battle of Hogwarts, the werewolf attack, those things — those had all happened ages before Victoire’s birth.

“I don’t,” she admitted.

“No,” Delphini agreed, “of course you don’t. I bet you were about to say something stupid like, ‘Everyone’s got parents.’”

“I wasn’t, actually,” Victoire said. “My... best friend is an orphan.” For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘boyfriend.’ “Lots of people are orphans.”

“Your best friend, huh? Poor her.” Victoire didn’t feel like correcting Delphi. In fact, Delphi looked so upset Victoire thought it best to leave her alone for a while.

\---

‘I love you,’ Victoire had written as part of an embarrassingly long letter, ‘but I love you like a brother. The best brother in the world, and I really do love you so much, but I’m not sure we should stay together.’ She’d rolled it up and secured it and even fastened it to Atkinson’s leg before she copped on to herself: breaking up with someone via owl was a heinous, awful, cowardly thing to do, and Victoire Weasley was no coward. WIth the note ripped up and Incendio’d to a small pile of ashes that made Effie sneeze when she sniffed it, Victoire Apparated over to Teddy’s Hogsmeade flat for a talk.

He took their break up (her dumping him, if she was being honest with herself) with such maturity and grace that she almost felt herself falling for him again. Almost, but not quite. She didn’t need, she decided, to fall in love or start a family right now. She had Atkinson and the Eff cat and, besides, her job took up so much of her time that it’d be insane to boot up Ashwindr to try and find a date. Anyway, her position as an Auror was so personally fulfilling it honestly surpassed any other relationship she’d ever had. Her whole life had led up to this.

\---

“Do you know how to play chess?”

Victoire brandished the portable set Uncle Ron and Hermione had given her for Christmas one year. It was a little banged up as Victoire was a fairly enthusiastic, if not all that skilled, player, but it had all its pieces and was functional enough. For some reason, she didn’t know if she could stand another night of just looking at Delphi and talking. Nothing had changed, exactly, but… Maybe she was just all talked out. She’d spent what felt like the entire day justifying breaking up with Teddy to absolutely everyone.

“A bit.” Victoire felt Delphi watching her as she unfolded the board and set out the pieces just in front of the wall. She decided to let Delphi play white and felt very virtuous about that decision. “I had some old magazines with chess problems, but I’m not very good. Also, did you notice there’s a wall in front of me?”

“We can try,” Victoire said. “If I can hear you, the chessmen probably can, too. Or, worse comes to worst, Sonorus should do it.”

“They won’t listen to me.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that.” Victoire had owned the set for a good fourteen years and had shouted both white and black into submission so many times that they yielded to pretty much anyone’s commands at this point. Maybe they’d always been like that; a portable set didn’t make much sense if it required the other player to bring her own chessmen, anyway.

“But I’ll let you blame it on that when you lose,” she said when Delphi continued to eye the pieces warily. Delphi laughed at that. It wasn’t as pretty a laugh as you’d assume from her voice and demeanor, more of a bark, really, than anything else, but it was the first time Victoire had heard her laugh and she sort of cherished it.

“Game on,” Delphi said. “Knight to C3.” Her knight sighed, nodded, and obeyed.

Twenty minutes later, Victoire concluded that Delphi would without a doubt have been sorted into Slytherin if she’d gone to Hogwarts, Slytherin-heavy lineage or no. She played ‘a bit’ of chess? Right. It had taken her about two turns to fuck Victoire over with what she eventually recognised as Munter’s Knightmare Gambit. Victoire had no way of extricating herself. She kept losing pieces until eventually—

“Queen to F6. Check and mate.” In a different situation — in a different life — Uncle Ron would have been proud. Delphi and Delphi’s Queen wore well-nigh identical smirks as Victoire’s King threw his crown on the ground. The Queen swatted at him with her sceptre, then brandished the crown high above her head. Delphi rose to her feet and took a little bow as Victoire mimed applause.

“Good game,” Victoire said. “I’m impressed, even if you _are_ a liar.”

Delphi widened her eyes at Victoire in mock-innocence.

“I’m not a liar; I simply know when it’s in my best interests to withhold the truth.”

Fair enough. Victoire found it hard not to smile.

“You want revenge?”

“You bet I do.”

\---

“Wotcher, stranger.” A shock of turquoise hair and a very tanned face appeared amidst the flames in the tiny fireplace in the corner of Victoire’s flat.

“Teddy, hi,” she said and made toward her battered couch. She flopped backwards into it; it made a pleasing, squashy sound as she landed.

“How are you doing, lady? Been ages since we talked. Just because we’re not together anymore doesn’t mean we can’t talk, yeah?” He grinned at her.

“Of course not.” And just because they weren’t together anymore didn’t keep her stomach from flipping at the sight of the sight of his handsome face and that grin. “I’m sorry, Teddy. You know it’s just I’m busy with my work.”

“All work and no play, am I right? We should go out and grab a pint soon, Weasley.”

“Definitely.” If Victoire was being honest, things had gotten a little stilted between them since they’d broken it off. It was like Teddy had no frame of reference for how to interact with her if it wasn’t either as a girlfriend or as one of the blokes. She supposed she didn’t really know how to best interact with him, herself. Her social world had shrunken to just a couple of people.

“So, about work.” Teddy was clearly steeling himself to say something; Victoire raised an eyebrow at him. “I’ve been hearing from Mollen that you’ve been working overtime a lot. Relieving her from her shift real early and staying later than you need to. Is that true?”

“I could use the extra cash,” she tried. “You know Christmas is coming up.”

“Do you even get paid extra for it, though?” The tone of Teddy’s voice indicated that he knew she did not.

“Fine. So I want to be a better Auror. I want to make sure I’m viewed as a hard-working, conscientious, y’know, asset to the department. Is that a crime?”

Teddy opened his mouth as if to say something, but Victoire spoke over him.

“So sue me. Lock me up with Delphi.”

“Delphi? Look, V, this is what I was worried about. Delphini Rowle is a powerful — I mean _really_ powerful — Dark Witch. What if she’s put a spell on you? Mesmerised you?”

“There are immense anti-magic wards on each of the cells in Azkaban as well as on Azkaban in its entirety. Don’t pretend you don’t know that, Lupin.”

“We’re kind of worried, that’s all.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Victoire snapped. “You and my parents, maybe? No, wait: you and Mollen, is it? Why don’t you just go fuck Mollen, then, and leave me alone? I’m no longer any of your business.” She’d positively snarled the last words; almost immediately, she realised she didn’t want to end their conversation on such an adversarial note. Why did her temper have to be so quick to flare up?

“Wait,” she said, “I’m sorry. I’m definitely not being taken in by Delphini Rowle.” But Teddy’s head had already disappeared. Victoire let out a whistling sigh and grabbed hold of a cushion, squeezing it to her chest so hard it was probably in danger of popping. She wasn’t being taken in by Delphi, she just wasn’t. And she had every bit of faith in Azkaban’s wards. She hadn’t been hexed or cursed or, what was it, mesmerised. She just wanted to be a good — she batted the word ‘friend’ away from her mind — guard. Nothing to say a good Auror couldn’t take a bit of an interest in her ward. Probably all the best Aurors did. Mesmerised, he’d said. The idea of it.

She had to take a small vial of Dreamless Sleep Potion to fall asleep at all that morning.

\---

A month passed, then another, and all of a sudden it was the best time of the year!

“Hey there, Delphi. You know what day it is?” Victoire was practically bursting with excitement.

“Well, you weren’t around the day before yesterday, so I’m guessing… Tuesday?”

“No! I mean, yes, it is Tuesday. But it’s also — drumroll, please — Christmas Eve! Look out the window!” Even Azkaban Island seemed to have become a little less grey in honour of the holidays. Well, it was still a bit grey, but the sky was also thick with big, white, feathery snowflakes. Victoire whipped out a stocking, full to bursting, that she’d been hiding behind her back.

“Happy Christmas Eve! Happy Christmas, Delphi.”

Victoire held her Bolting Rod like an artist’s brush and sketched a square on the transparent wall. The square glowed faintly before dispersing, creating an opening just large enough for Victoire to levitate the stocking into Delphi’s cell. Delphi caught it and Victoire closed the opening back up.

“Thank you,” Delphi said - no, breathed. She began pulling sweets out of the stocking, exclaiming over each new packet and bag. “Fizzing Whizbees! I’ve only ever had those once. And peach rings! They’re my favourite.”

“I should have gotten you a cracker,” Victoire said, “but I was worried about security and all that. So just sweets.” Victoire had figured that the Department wouldn’t frown too much on a gift of food, even if they in general might not be too pleased with her giving Delphi a gift at all. What’s done was done, though.

“Don’t be silly, this is the best present I’ve ever gotten,” Delphi said. Perhaps, Victoire reflected with a pang, it was the only one. But Delphi looked downright gleeful as she dove ever-deeper into the stocking.

“Ice mice!” She laughed in delight. “And a huge thing of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans. Wizzo!”

“Yeah, about that. Wizzo?”

“What?” Delphi’s words were muffled; she’d ripped open a bag of peach rings and seemed to be speaking through the majority of the bag’s contents.

“Oh, nothing important. It’s just I’ve never really heard anyone say ‘wizzo’ before I met you. In real life, I mean.”

“Really?” Delphi, swallowing her fistful of peach rings, looked surprised rather than crestfallen. “I thought all the kids were saying it.”

“I’ve never heard anyone say it. Maybe in old school stories, Hilda Bagnell, that kind of thing. You know, midnight feasts, lashings and lashings of butterbeer, totally wizzo!

“It’s nice, though,” she hastened to say, worried that she’d inadvertently offended Delphi or made her sad. “I like it when you say it.”

“Oh yeah? Wizzo!”

They grinned at each other.

“Thank you again,” Delphi said, lining up all her sweet packets in front of her. “I’ve never had a real Christmas, you know. Euphemia didn’t celebrate Christmas, at least not with me. Maybe with her Augurey.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry to hear that,” Victoire said.

“You have family, though, and friends. And a boyfriend, right? Isn’t there anywhere else you’d rather be on Christmas Eve?”

“No boyfriend,” Victoire hastened to say, “but, er, not really. You know, you have to pay your dues as a Junior Auror, even if it means coming in over the holidays.” It wasn’t the only reason she’d offered to take the Christmas shift, but it was the only reason she chose to recognise. “I’m seeing my family tomorrow for Christmas Day, anyway, so it’s all right.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Delphi said simply. Victoire fought a blush. “And I can’t thank you enough for bringing me some Christmas Cheer. I wouldn’t even have known about it being Christmas if you hadn’t told me. The other Auror, what’s her name, hasn’t said a thing.”

Delphi walked close to the invisible wall and put her palm up against it. As if charmed into doing so, almost like her hand was moving of its own volition, Victoire reached out and pressed her own palm against the spot where Delphi’s hand was. There was a fraction of an inch of impenetrable matter between them, but if it hadn’t been there, they’d be touching. Victoire hardly knew what to think.

“You know,” Delphi said, “I’m glad there aren’t Dementors now. I feel like I’ve gained some really happy memories, even though I know it’s absurd. I’d never want to lose them.”

Victoire didn’t know what to say, but perhaps she didn’t need to say anything much. She pressed her hand harder against the wall, against the image of Delphi’s hand.

\---

Another few weeks and Mollen Lind arrived at work one morning with the grimmest possible look on her face.

“Auror Weasely,” she greeted Victoire, who was already bleary-eyed with lack of sleep and not, as such, in the mood to talk. Still, when Mollen gestured for her to follow her into a small staff room, Victoire obediently followed.

“Seriously, Mollen, you can call me Victoire,” she said as she sat down at the table, Mollen in the chair opposite. “Vic or V, even. No need to be such a bureaucrat.”

“Victoire, then. Look, I know as well as you do that Rowle seems sane for a prisoner and even kind of pleasant sometimes when she’s not in a strop.”

Victoire couldn’t recall that she’d ever witnessed Delphi in a strop or throwing tantrums or anything like it, but she let it go.

“And she’s lovely and all that,” Mollen continued, “if you’re into that kind of thing.”

“Don’t be daft,” Victoire said, suddenly and unaccountably embarrassed. Mollen seemed just as embarrassed, but she rallied:

“Either way, that’s not the point. You’re not her friend. You’re not even her confidante. I will remind you that you were hired to guard Rowle, not to fraternise with her.”

Victoire had nothing against Mollen. She was a nice person, usually, and a competent Auror, but right now she was being a dick. Victoire would not stand for being treated like a child just because Mollen outranked her and apparently thought you should treat prisoners like they had the plague.

“You clearly think I’m dumb as a Doxy,” said Victoire, “but there’s no need to be condescending. You really think I don’t know the rules, or are you just being a bit of a prat for the fun of it?”

“All right, Victoire Weasley, but never say I didn’t warn you. Off you go, then.”

But I didn’t say goodbye to Delphi yet, Victoire didn’t say, though she thought it. She left the building and got on the boat home, head held high and her mind buzzing with irritation.

\---

Victoire’s first year as an Auror was nearly over. How could a year have passed so quickly? Years never seemed to pass as quickly back at Hogwarts, but then she supposed she had fewer History of Magic classes to contend with these days. On another endless and horrifically boring Saturday, Bill and Maman had invited themselves over for a cup of tea, though Victoire suspected they mostly wanted to spend time with their grandkitty.

“Effie!” they called upon appearing in Victoire’s flat. “Where’s our girl?”

When Effie sauntered out of the bathroom, Maman fell upon her and showered her with a litany of French praise so rapid Victoire understood no more than every fifth word or so. Bill gave the cat a manly nod before breaking into a huge grin and picking her up, spinning her round and bopping her on the nose.

Only after that did they greet their eldest daughter. In fairness, they seemed happy to see her, too. Many long and heartfelt hugs had been exchanged by the time Victoire had managed to shepherd her parents to her little dining nook. She prepared them each a steaming mug of tea and sat down with them.

Of course it didn’t take long before they began asking about her work. 

“So you’re switching over to fieldwork soon,” said Bill in a voice that Victoire thought was meant to sound encouraging. “That’ll be fun, right?”

“Yeah, it’ll be fun, I guess.” Why did everyone make such a fuss about fieldwork? It’d be good with a change of pace, Victoire supposed, but she was plenty happy where she was.

Bill shot Maman a capital-L Look.

“You are not depressed, are you?” Maman asked. She leaned forward over the table. “We worry about our Victoire.”

“I’m not at all depressed. Promise.” She really wasn’t; the vast majority of the time she was happier than she’d been in years.

“Just make sure you get out a bit in your free time, yeah? Don’t just sit around in the dark all by your lonesome.”

“Well, she has ze cat.”

“That’s true.” Effie had jumped up on the dinner table. Instead of shooing her away, Bill ruffled the fur on the top of her head. “I trust Effie will take care of you. Still, peanut. Azkaban can be a strain on the mind even with the Dementors gone. Take care of yourself.”

“I will. Promise.” But, if she was being honest with herself, Victoire didn’t feel like Azkaban put a strain on her at all.

\---

“Delphi! What’s wrong?”

Victoire dropped her bag on the ground and hurried over to Delphi’s cell. Even from a distance, she looked so crushed Victoire got worried something terrible had happened to her.

“Nothing,” Delphi said after a moment’s silence. “It’s just, I’m lonely. I’m really lonely. I don’t have any mates. I don’t have family. I don’t have anyone to talk to; nobody ever visits me. I know why, but it’s just… I don’t want to complain, and I don’t want pity, but it’s hard sometimes.”

“You have me. And Auror Lind, too, I guess.”

“Yeah, but you’re paid to be here. You wouldn’t spend all this time here if you weren’t.”

“Well…” Victoire considered carefully what to say. “Probably not, no, but only, really, because I wouldn’t be allowed to. Delphi, I care about you, swear to Du— Merlin.”

Delphi looked away, but not before Victoire could see her eyes begin to glisten.

“I know that’s not enough,” Victoire continued, “but I promise I don’t spend the nights counting down the seconds until I get relieved in the morning. It’s not just the paycheque.”

She pressed the palm of her hand against the invisible wall. Delphi slowly rose to her feet.

“I shouldn’t say it — there are all kinds of regulations — but I like you. I like spending time with you.” Victoire couldn’t believe she was not just saying it, but feeling it. “I like you,” she repeated. “I consider you a friend.”

“Me, too. You, too, I mean.” Delphi came up and touched her hand to the wall in front of Victoire’s. Just like before, Victoire felt drawn to Delphi. To her hand, anyway. Despite the cold, unyielding wall between them, it felt like they were touching. Victoire’s head swam; the room seemed to crackle with an electricity almost physical. Was this what they called a frisson? It shook Victoire to her core. Helpless to stop herself, she extended a shaky finger and began tracing the area where Delphi’s face would have been could she have stood closer, not walled in but close enough for Victoire to touch. She touched the wall with her thumb like she was stroking Delphi’s cheek. She swiped three fingers across like she might have stroked Delphi’s silver-grey hair away from her face, and she traced the imprint — imprint? — of Delphi’s slightly parted lips. But she’d never do that to a friend, would she? She stopped abruptly and backed away, reeling in confusion.

“I’m sorry,” Delphi said. She looked devastated and yet somehow gorgeous even in devastation. The pallor of her skin did not take away from the beauty of her face and her nearly violet-tinged eyes were wide and shiny.

“You didn’t do anything,” Victoire replied — well, more like croaked. “It was all me; I crossed a line I should never have crossed.” She’d have to turn herself in, surely. She’d have to get replaced by an Auror who could observe proper boundaries. “Delphini, I never should have…”

“Victoire.” Delphi’s voice hardly even rose to a whisper, and yet Victoire heard her loud and clear. “Please come here. Please.”

Victoire couldn’t help herself. She swallowed hard and walked over. It wasn’t just Delphi’s hand that was pushed against the wall anymore, it was practically her entire body.

“Just once?” Delphi said. She let her eyes fall closed and touched her lips to the wall.

“Just once,” Victoire confirmed weakly. The moment she pressed her lips to the image of Delphi’s, she knew three things: that she couldn’t leave Azkaban just yet; that it wasn’t going to be just once; and that she was completely and irrevocably in love with Delphi. She didn’t want to consider what that said about her and in some ways she didn’t really give a damn.

\---

“Victoire,” Delphi gasped, so close to the wall it clouded over with her breath. Her robes were pulled down, baring her shoulders, a breast. Victoire was just as close on the other side, trying to grapple with her feelings. “Can’t you create an opening? So I can touch you. Just once.”

“You know there’s no ‘just once.’ Not with us,” Victoire said, trying to regulate her breathing. “And they regulate the use of the Bolting Rod. They track it. I got enough weird looks over the Christmas stocking. They’d never let me, I couldn’t come in unless it was an emergency.”

“Victoire.” It was a moan more than anything, and they kissed again, this weird sort of non-kissing kissing that had become the new normal. Victoire’s entire body ached and burned with want.

“Delphi,” Victoire said as she broke off, panting. “I’m getting reassigned. Year of guarding, year of fieldwork, then guarding again. I leave in—

“When?”

“Three weeks’ time.” If she hadn’t known any better, Victoire would have said the noise Delphi made sounded like a sob. She didn’t feel too far from tears, herself. “You’ll get another guard, it’ll be okay,” she tried to convince them both.

“I don’t want another guard! I want you. Victoire, I love you. I love you,” she repeated when Victoire stared at her in horror.

“I love you, too,” Victoire finally said. “I shouldn’t. Fuck it, I love you, too.”

\---

On the very final day Victoire was due at Azkaban, she stepped inside the building and up the cold stone stairs with a lump in her throat. She’d dragged her feet on the way there just a little bit — she couldn’t deal with it being the final time she ascended those stairs, the final time she wandered down the corridor toward Delphi’s cell — so when she finally arrived, Mollen was already gone, probably having left a passive-aggressive note on a scrap of parchment somewhere.

It took a while for her to locate Delphi in her cell, because she wasn’t sitting or lying on her bunk like she’d usually been at the start of the year, and she wasn’t stood close to the wall waiting for Victoire to arrive, either, like she’d taken up doing recently.

Once Victoire spotted the heap of black robes on the floor, a white limb sticking out at a potentially unnatural angle, she screamed. Moving impossibly quickly, she tore her Bolting Rod from her hip and slashed an opening into the wall. She leapt inside and threw herself down on the floor so hard she skinned her knees through the thin material of her robes.

“Delphi,” she cried, but at least she could hear her breathing. She pulled at the robes, ripping them, wanting only to ascertain Delphi was okay, and how badly she needed a Healer. Finally, her fingers brushed hair and she turned Delphi’s head toward her, gazing at her face.

“Delphi,” she said again, and Delphi opened her eyes. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Delphi whispered. “It’s an emergency.” Victoire only realised what kind when Delphi’s arm sneaked around her waist and pulled her down on top of her. In the same moment, Victoire’s body seemed to register that she was touching Delphi — actually touching her, no walls involved — and it twisted toward Delphi like it had been possessed. She crushed her lips against Delphi’s; Delphi responded by bucking up into the kiss, grabbing at Victoire’s hair and pulling her ever closer.

“It’s an emergency,” she whispered again, whispered into Victoire’s kiss. “You have to be here.”

“I do,” Victoire said with a moan. She’d never kissed any girl before, not as far as she could remember, and certainly she’d never gone any further than that, but it was easy as anything; she felt like her body had been created expressly for the purpose of being with Delphi. Delphi strained up against Victoire and Victoire plunged her hands inside Delphi’s robes, her hands seeming to physically ignite and burn as she finally touched Delphi’s bare skin. It was cool and smooth beneath her fingers as Victoire caressed Delphi’s neck, her throat, her collarbones. Victoire skimmed her hands over Delphi’s bare breasts and they moaned as one; Delphi grabbed a fistful of Auror robe fabric and pulled Victoire closer. She bit Victoire’s earlobe, then grazed her teeth down the side of Victoire’s own neck; she ripped the robes open with her free hand and left frenzied kisses all the way down Victoire’s sternum. She’d let go of her grip on Victoire’s robes and her hand was in Victoire’s knickers now, two fingers plunging inside her. Victoire had reached a point where she couldn’t think, just feel. She didn’t even have control of her body, it felt like, but when Delphi pushed Victoire’s bra down and caught her nipple between her teeth, the pain made Victoire finally jolt with realisation. What they were doing?

“No,” Victoire said, “I can’t.” Panting, she disentangled herself from Delphi’s hands and tried to button her robe back up, but buttons were missing and she ended up just having to hold it together across her chest.

It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, harder than all three gruelling years at the Academy condensed into a single moment, but she managed to rise to her feet and take a step back.

“I can’t,” she repeated. “Delphini, you know I can’t.”

“It’s Delphi.” Delphi was crying, not even trying to hide it. Even in crying, she was so impossibly gorgeous, the perfect tears dotting her face somehow only enhancing its beauty. The last thing Victoire wanted was to go.

“I have to go,” she said. “Delphi, I have to.” Victoire was crying too; she swiped at her eyes ineffectively.

“But it’s an emergency,” Delphi said in a tiny voice. “You can be here when it’s an emergency.” She was almost naked, her pale body only partially covered by the remnants of her prison robes, and Victoire felt a stab of want so brutal it scared her.

“Not for this long. Not long enough to do the things I want to.”

She took another shaky step back, out of the slash she’d made in the wall, her tears running freely down her face now. Hesitating for a second that seemed longer than any second in the history of time, she forced herself to grab her Bolting Rod and knit the opening shut again.

“You could say I attacked you,” Delphi said. Her voice was still so quiet it was difficult to make out exactly what she was saying. “You could say I faked an emergency and attacked you and didn’t let you out until the morning.”

“I would never—” Victoire had a difficult time finding the right words. She felt gutted, not just metaphorically, but literally: ripped open and raw, pulsing with grief. “Delphi, do you know how much that would backfire on you? It’s not worth it.”

“It would be worth it. It would.”

Victoire tried to will her heartbeat to settle. If only Delphi knew how very much she wanted to say fuck everything and step right back inside that cell.

“What’ll be worth it,” she managed to say, “is one day you’ll get released for good behaviour. Uncle Harry is a good guy, he really is, he won’t keep you in here forever. And I’ll vouch for you and then I’ll come get you, and we’ll be together. That’ll be worth it. But I can’t vouch for you if they think you attacked me. I can’t vouch for you if they sack me for being with you. Delphi, I wish I could, so much. You don’t know how much.”

“You’ll come get me?”

“I’ll come get you. I don’t know when — maybe we’ll be old and my hair will be grey, too — but I’ll come get you, and we’ll be together. I promise.”

Victoire prayed to all the higher powers she could think of, Muggle and Magic, that she’d be able to keep that promise, preferably sooner rather than later. She resolved to appeal to Uncle Harry and to Minister Granger. In the meantime, she would never forget about Delphi. All the strength felt zapped from her body. She sank, rather than sat, down on the stool and watched for the last time as Delphi curled up on her bunk and finally fell asleep.

When morning came, Victoire really had no choice but to leave. She did and didn’t want to wake Delphi up. It was probably easier that she didn’t, for both of them. If she woke her up, she’d never be able to leave. Instead, she pressed a final kiss to the wall and made herself turn and walk out the door, each step heavy like her shoes were leaded and her body already aching with longing. She walked to the head warden’s office to relinquish her Bolting Rod and arrange for a boat out.

\---

For her fieldwork assignment, Victoire ended up being stationed by the ocean. It was good, she reckoned, because she’d always loved all bodies of water, but her mind kept wandering back to that island in the middle of the North Sea so frequently that she started to get a reputation for being scatterbrained. Victoblivious Weasley, her fellow Aurors called her, and she didn’t give much of a damn about that. They made up fanciful stories about the man she’d loved and lost, tittering at or cooing over or gossiping about the letters she wrote every night — letters she set on fire, or tore up, or dissolved in the ocean water as soon as they were completed. She knew they thought she was writing to a ghost, a dead man, a former lover on the bottom of the sea, and she let them think that. Nothing good could come of the truth.

‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ she wrote, ‘and I am yours always,’ but Delphi wasn’t allowed to receive owls. ‘I’ll come see you soon,’ she wrote, but she knew she couldn’t come see her soon. ‘I’ll come see you as soon as I can,’ she amended, but who knew how long that would be? ‘We’ll be together,’ she finished her letter, but she didn’t sign it and she didn’t tie it to Atkinson’s leg. For once, she didn’t destroy it, either. She sealed it with a kiss and rolled it into a compact scroll that fit in an empty flask of Bulbadox Extract she’d saved in her pocket since a field experiment. In the middle of the night, when she was very sure nobody was looking, she threw the flask out to sea. It’d never get to Delphi, Victoire knew that. A kid would find it on a beach somewhere, or maybe a fish would swallow it whole. She’d never know which, though, and that made it a little easier to think that maybe one day the flask would wash up on the shores of Azkaban island.


End file.
